Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
Yup. No argument.
This is where I disagree.
You're right, in a sense. Our club is cordial enough. It's cordial enough almost by definition; it's cordial enough because the ones who weren't cordial enough already left.
Relaxing the filter pushes that boundary a bit further. It would cause more people to leave.
The club would still be cordial enough, defined in terms of the remaining members of the club, because it cannot be anything else; a group will always consist of the people who are members of the group. But merely consisting of the people who are the members of the group isn't enough. One must weigh the value of the people who are no longer in the group against the cost of keeping those members.
Here's the Foundation, which is, as always, the touchstone to use when discussing rule changes:
Rules against anything is a sacrifice. I'm not going to argue otherwise. In an ideal world, we could somehow allow all forms of discussion to occur without driving anyone away. But in practice, that ideal isn't achievable. Any amount of permission we give will drive people away; any amount of restriction we impose will halt conversation. Rules against anything is a sacrifice, but at the same time, a lack of rules against something is also a sacrifice.
I personally think we've achieved a reasonable balance, but I also thought, for some time, that perhaps we'd gone a bit too far in the direction of lack-of-rules. Some of our new mods agree and are willing to put more time into shoving the general conversational climate in the direction that they think is appropriate.
This is a sacrifice. I am genuinely sad for the conversations this kills, that we will never see because the strata of the forum itself no longer supports them.
But I'm happy for the people and opinions we may bring back.
If you want to convince me otherwise, you need to make a good argument that less moderation better suits the needs of the Foundation. I think you'll have a hard time doing this, because you'll need to convince me, and convincing me is hard, ironically because I don't have any firm evidence, I just have gut feeling and instinct. This means you need to either provide a form of evidence that I'm not convinced can exist, or you'll need to overcome that instinct.
But that's your goal, and merely pointing to the conversations lost isn't going to do it.
I'm already aware of those, insofar as someone can be aware of something that never existed.
My model on how civility rules fit with the foundation : imagine we still had the full spectrum of ideologies here, in a normal distribution. Because of the ideological distance, the most vicious fights would be between extremes, say left-anarchists vs nazis. They’d be hardest hit by the tightening of civility rules, and it would narrow the ideological spectrum.
I think this fits with the nearest example, the two long bans under discussion here, burdensomecount’s and mine, which started as a spat between us. While most of the sub has sympathy for christianity, or at least ‘believes in belief’, and finds /r/atheism cringe, I’m still a virulent antitheist, while burdensomecount is an earnest believer in a different religion (also different race, which was more of a factor in his ban). So the odd ones cancel each other out. I’m not saying it’s impossible for an individual to stay impeccably civil despite a considerable ideological distance with the median, but it’s less likely, so on the scale of ideas, that’s how it goes.
I suppose you think greater civility would help recapture some of the center and left commentariat, but in practice, civility mostly protects the sub’s majority. A representative example is darwin’s ban, which I always opposed as a too strict interpretation of civility rules.
My instincts (and as you say, that discussion may be pointless) favour the man who gets banned for offending over the one who leaves when offended.
But whatever happens, even though my ban would obviously be a grievous loss, I'm sure this place will remain pretty great. If there was an election for motte dictator, you’d get my vote, and I’m not just saying that, dear leader.
I think my issue is that civility is an axis on its own, and worse, it's a contagious one. If two people are flaming each other then the spectators think "ah, flaming each other is okay", and we get more flaming, and it just kinda continues from there. There isn't really a way to limit it to just extremists; if we allow it for extremists we allow it for everyone.
But on top of that, I don't think it's an inevitable component of being an extremist. I think there's no reason debating extremists need to be any less civil than people who are ideologically aligned, regardless of how different they are.
With these two together, there's serious consequences to allowing it and not so much benefit to allowing it.
It is legitimately appreciated :)
I keep hoping someone else comes along and does what we do, only better, and, man, just nobody does that.
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